2 Answers
2

It takes the bottom dollar to pay for the labor, the cost of production, the fertilizer, the taxes on the farm, and the mortgage and all that, but it is the top dollar that has the "funny business" in it. If you go to Europe with your wife next year it comes out of the top dollar.

Originally it didn't mean "obtain the top price" so much as "look to the 'margin' over fixed costs". Advice repeated in 1907 with similar wording by the equivalent Board in Massachusetts...

It is the only way to get the top dollar. It takes the first dollar to pay the rent of the land, and the next two or three for the labor, and the next dollar or two for the fertilizers, and another dollar or two for the spraying...

Just curious...is there a British equivalent for this idiom? Pay top pound or something?
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JLGMar 18 '12 at 3:48

This is actually completely wrong, since the original "top dollar" was very specifically only the one on the top. All the ones underneath were used up running the business, so only the top one - if it existed - was available to use as real money for personal spending.
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FumbleFingersMar 18 '12 at 12:51

I read your answer with interest. Do you know how pay top dollar came to mean spending a lot then?
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JLGMar 18 '12 at 15:12

I think the gradual shift of meaning in my answer shows that. First, the farmer was being advised to concentrate on the profit at the margin, then getting that vital bit extra became synonymous with selling at a higher price, and finally it shifted over to paying the higher price to get the best quality.
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FumbleFingersMar 18 '12 at 15:32

...after trawling Google Books for a couple of minutes, I think you're right about the bottom dollar. It seems to have suddenly become popular as bet your bottom dollar in the mid-late 1860s, where before that it only (rarely) appeared in phrases like "I gave him my bottom dollar" (my last one, all that I had).
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FumbleFingersMar 18 '12 at 15:42